Chapter 255: Sword Festival (VIII)

“Don’t worry… You won’t die, at least, not on my watch.”

Seraph looked at him for a long moment before suddenly starting to laugh, tears quickly swelling up in her eyes.

Gray didn’t mind and gently stroked her back.

“H-hahhagh… pfft, s-sorry! B-but, it’s just that… that’s a very confident thing to say at the bottom of a hole,” she used her thumb to wipe her tears away.

“Tsk,” Gray clicked his tongue.

“Says the person who was crying two minutes ago.”

“HEEY!!!”

She wiped her face with the back of her hand.

He stood up and offered her his hand.

She took it, got to her feet, and released it immediately after, straightening her clothes and her hair.

“Alright, let’s go and hope that there’s a way to get back up.”

“Mhm…” she nodded.

They started walking throughout the whole.

The passage was dark but not completely; the inscription lines along the lower walls carried a faint residual glow that was too dim to be useful and too present to be ignorable.

Everything had a grey, sourceless quality that flattened depth and made distances harder to read than they should have been.

A true rabbit hole…

Then Seraph said, quietly enough that the words didn’t carry past the two of them:

“…You called me Sera, didn’t you?”

Gray kept walking and didn’t bother to look at her.

“Did I?”

“Back there. When you were…” She paused, and he could hear her choosing her words.

“When you were holding me. You said my name, and you called me Sera.”

“…Force of habit,” Gray shrugged lightly.

“That’s not a habit you’ve had since you’ve arrived at this academy,” she noted. “You’ve called me Seraph, or nothing at all. Not Sera.”

“I used to call you that.”

“Yes. When we were children…” she paused, looking at his side profile for a while.

“…Do you want me to keep calling you that?”

“Really?!”

Her voice jumped up so fast and so bright that Gray actually turned to look at her, his eyes slightly wider than usual, which for him was the equivalent of anyone else’s jaw dropping.

Seraph composed herself immediately.

“Ahem…” she cleared her throat, and then looked at the wall beside her, as if she was truly analyzing it.

Gray looked at her for a moment longer and held back his laugh, as his lips slowly curved up to reply to her excited words.

“Sure. If you’re THAT excited about it, I’ll call you anything you want.”

Seraph laughed happily at his words before bumping his shoulder and speaking in a casual voice, “Don’t make it strange.”

“You’re the one who reacted like that.”

“I was…. just happy!”

“You mean excited? You practically jumped, and your eyes almost lit up this whole cavern,” Gray added teasingly.

“HEY! I wasn’t that excited!”

“Sure, sure…”

“Hmpf… stop that already!”

Despite her complaining, she was already walking much closer to Gray, not standing as far away as before.

Gray obviously noticed this, but didn’t share his thoughts.

But then… Gray’s step suddenly slowed down.

’…This is a problem,’ he sighed inwardly.

The passage ahead opened into a drop in the ceiling height and a corresponding widening of the floor that announced a larger space before they reached it.

He stopped at the threshold.

Seraph stopped beside him.

The hole in the floor ahead was considerably larger than anything they had seen so far.

It was like a genuine collapse in the tunnel floor.

Gray looked at it.

’…A Ground Devouring Worm was here moments ago. Fucking hell… now, we’re definitely fucked.’

He turned back to Seraph and spoke, “A Ground Devouring Worm made this… and was probably here a few minutes ago.”

Seraph looked at him.

“How can you tell?”

“The shape.” He crouched down at the edge, studying the collapsed stone without touching it.

“Worm holes have a specific pressure pattern around the rim. The stone doesn’t break; it compresses outward from the center. Like something pushed through it from below rather than the ground giving way naturally.”

Seraph crouched beside him and looked at the rim.

“…The edges are pushed outward,” she said.

“Yes.”

“So it came up from below.”

“And went back down,” he said, looking at the opposite edge. “The compression pattern continues on that side. It came up, moved through, went back down.”

“Recently?”

“The stone hasn’t settled yet. The dust is still loose.” He stood.

“Very recently.”

Seraph stood beside him and looked at the hole with the expression of someone receiving information they would have preferred not to receive.

“So it was just here,” she spoke in realization.

“Indeed.”

“And now it’s somewhere in these tunnels.”

“Yes… The worm is probably here with us.”

She was quiet for a moment.

“You’re being very calm about this…”

“What’s the use of panicking if it wouldn’t help our situation whatsoever?” he shrugged his shoulders before crouching down.

“…Dammit.” She exhaled quietly and looked at the hole again.

As for Gray, he turned his attention inward.

’Jasmine. Can you feel anything nearby?’

[…Yes. Fifteen meters down that hole. There’s a life signature, large, very dense, but the mana waves are slow and irregular.]

’Irregular how?’

[The way breathing is irregular when something is asleep. It’s not moving. Its core output is at a minimum, so I think it’s sleeping.]

Gray looked at the hole.

’A sleeping worm, huh?’

[You have a chance of killing it.]

’…But do that without mana, I’ll need to get extremely close to it.«

[That’s indeed a big problem…Do you know any of its weak points, at least?]

’I do,’ he nodded lightly.

’Ground Devouring Worms have a weak point at the base of the first segment behind the head, where the outer shell hasn’t fully calcified. A precise enough strike can easily reach the core directly.’

’But the problem… what if it wakes up before I reach the weak point?

[You’ll be dead.]

’Yup. The last thing we could do is try to stay there for two more days since the competition lasts only three days. After that, we’ll be pulled out… but that also means that we are going to be disqualified.’

’I genuinely don’t care… but Sera will probably be very sad about that.’

[Hah… are you caring about her now?]

’This competition… is probably a way of improving her chances of getting to the throne, so I wouldn’t want to ruin that.’

[Mhm…]

“Alright… I’ll check if there’s something in the hole,” spoke Gray, turning to look at Seraph with a small smile.

“No! I’ll go with you!” she instantly refused.

“You’re definitely staying here.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Sera.”

“Don’t Sera me right now,” she pouted, crossing her arms. “You just spent five whole minutes telling me not to get separated from you, and now you want to go down a hole alone.”

“The situation changed.”

“The situation is that you want to go down a dark hole in an anti-mana zone, and you want me to just stand here and wait.”

“That’s true,” he surprisingly nodded in agreement.

She stared at him.

“That’s your entire argument? That’s true?” she repeated his words.

“You’re exhausted. Your sword qi output has been running on empty since the imp encounter. Going down there in your current state creates two problems instead of solving one.”

She opened her mouth.

“If something goes wrong down there,” he continued, before she could speak, “I need someone up here who can respond to it. Who can move, who knows the passage layout, who can create an exit option if one becomes necessary.” He looked at her steadily.

“That person needs to be functional. You’re the only other person here.”

Seraph looked at him.

“You’re making me the contingency plan…?”

“You’re the most capable contingency plan available.”

She held his gaze for a long moment, clearly working through the argument from multiple directions and finding it irritatingly solid from most of them.

“What’s down there?” she asked.

“Probably a passage… and I need to check what it connects to. It might be a way out.”

That last part wasn’t entirely false.

She narrowed her eyes suspiciously, but seeing how calm and confident he was acting, she finally sighed.

“How long?” she asked.

“Not long.”

“That’s not a time.”

“Alright… fifteen minutes then. If I’m not back in fifteen minutes, take the right passage back to the last junction and wait there. Don’t come down after me.”

“And if something happens to you down there?”

“Then the contingency plan activates.”

She looked at him for a long, quiet moment.

“I really dislike you sometimes,” she pouted

“I know.”

“Come back quickly… please.” Her face dropped slighly.

“I will.”

Gray smiled lightly.

She stepped back from the edge, kept her eyes on him with the eyes of someone who intended to count every one of those fifteen minutes personally.

Gray looked at the hole and unsheathed his rapier from his waist before jumping into the hole without a shred of hesitation.

Crrrkkkk!

His rapier was stabbed into the sides of the hole, slowing down his fall as he suddenly took a big gulp of oxygen and closed his mouth shut.

After all, one of the most special things about the Ground Devouring Worms was the fact that they were blind.

And because of that… their other senses were strengthened exponentially.

’…I need to be extremely careful about this.’

He reached the ground, and in front of him, almost coiled like a snake… stood a twenty-meter-long worm.

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